Month: November 2014

The Macao trip that bombed

/ nafinathan / Leave a comment

I had been hearing about Macao for a few years now, like Hong Kong, it’s also a “special administrative region” of China. This means that it’s officially a part of China but maintains its own ruling systems.

It used to be a Portuguese colony, which is why the architecture is very European looking and Portuguese is the official language (as well as Cantonese).

But what Macau is famous for is its casinos, revenues are higher than in Vegas and the “Venetian Macao” is actually the largest Casino in the world.

So all in all , I was pretty pumped up to see this luxurious yet historically rich place. Unfortunately it turned out to be a pretty disastrous trip.

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Chinese Abc, not as easy as 1, 2 ,3

/ nafinathan / 7 Comments

Jiangmen, is my new home in China. This city is located in the Guangdong province of Southern China, just a couple of hours from Hong Kong. I came here to take what it seemed to be an impossible challenge, learn chinese.

Learning mandarin or putonghua has been quite a feat, it’s a very complex language to say the least. It frustrates me that there are  4 different tones to each syllable, which if I mess up I could be saying something completely insulting. The tone difference between kiss and please in mandarin is one that I haven’t mastered yet, and it’s a pretty dangerous mistake I would say.

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The untold struggles of life in China

/ nafinathan / 6 Comments

I came to China 2 months ago to learn chinese, and let’s just say it has been no walk in the park.

I love travelling, learning from new cultures and trying new things but in China, my trip didn’t start off all that well. Nothing bad happened, nor was I unhappy, it was just a major culture shock and it took a toll emotionally. I had been to China before, as a tourist but actually living here changes things.

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